"I thank Providence who has guided my destinies, that I now live ; nay, that I live happier than a king of Persia. You know, fathers and fellow-citizens, that I am wholly occupied with this academical garden; that it is my Rhodus, or rather my Elysium. There I possess all the spoils of the east and the west which I wished for ; and which, in my belief, are far more precious than the silken garments of the Babylonians, and the porcelain vases of the Chinese. There I receive and convey instruction. There I admire the wisdom of the Creator, which manifests itself in so many various modes, and demonstrate it to others."

“As a natural historian according to the principles of science, up to the present time I have been not been able to discover any character by which man can be distinguished from the ape; for there are somewhere apes which are less hairy than man, erect in position, going just like him on two feet, and recalling the human species by the use they make of their hands and feet, to such an extent, that the less educated travellers have given them out as a kind of man.”

“From my youth you have taught me, O God, and now I would like to proclaim Your Wonders”

“The observer of nature see, with admiration, that "the whole world is full of the glory of God.”

“I demand of you, and of the whole world, that you show me a generic character—one that is according to generally accepted principles of classification, by which to distinguish between Man and Ape. I myself most assuredly know of none. ...But, if I had called man an ape, or vice versa, I should have fallen under the ban of all the ecclesiastics. It may be that as a naturalist I ought to have done so.”

“Human beings, having, above all creatures, received the power of reason... need to be aware where nature is unaware. Nature reaches its culmination in humans, but human consciousness has not its essence in itself or nature.”

“Every genus is natural, created as such in the beginning, hence not to be rashly split up or stuck together by whim or according to anyone's theory.”